Tuesday, June 10, 2008

stories are short--

but it takes a long time to write them. Not as long as a novel, oh no, but it's not proportionate to their size. Sometimes it's a matter of stopping, because you don't know where to go. I've had stories that stretched over years, because I couldn't figure out how to get beyond the 1st 3 pages. Sometimes you just keep slogging, doing a little bit and a little bit more, not seeing the end, or even how you're going to fit in the dead husband on the 2nd floor into the so-called plot.That's where I am now, struggling with the dead husband (who is also nameless, and maybe that's his problem), and trying to figure out if I want this story to have two points of view or only one. Having multiple POVs is convenient--you can say things from more than one place, put in events that are invisible to the single POV. But convenience isn't all in a story--you can't just keep putting things in like discount appliances that you thought you might like, but now they're cluttering up the counters of your kitchen (I wanted that juicer, but it's so big!).Anyway, today is a day of not much writing, since I have to go to campus and do various things, and also tonight is my writers group night (ironic: writers group = no writing). Which is why, in this scrap of time before I go and write reference letters and xerox things, I'm thinking about writing instead.